For having been off for a week, it feels like it passed in the blink of an eye.

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I was surrounded by family and I will do them all a favor by not posting photos. Mainly because almost every one of my photos seems to have someone stuffing their face and thus doing their best impersonation of a chipmunk. I did not plan this. But that cheese table was to die for…so I can’t blame them.

(no, really, thank me later!)

It was, surprisingly, a really nice day. I was extremely worried about a phenomenon known as a "Catered Thanksgiving" It was out of the norm, strange and frankly, I don’t like change. It was really good food. It didn’t taste catered at all and because of that, I can ignore that I plucked my food out of big silvery aluminum serving trays. Even the cranberry sauce was actual cranberries with orange zest for flavor instead of the horror I’d been imagining (read: canned cranberry jelled goo)

The next day was one I was also dreading. I’ve done nothing but stress and worry about this week of vacation and this was the biggest reason I was doing so. We buried my Grandfather. The service was really nice and there were a lot of people there. At one point, my Papa stood up and spoke about his father and read something aloud that he’d found that floored me.

Go read this. I’ll wait. No really, read it.

(Some pictures to amuse me while I wait for you to read the link.)

View from Widow's Walk on top of the Browning Plantation

View from Widow's Walk on top of the Browning Plantation

I will, of course, assume that you have humored me and gone to read the link.

This woman went to the estate sale that was hosted at my Grandfather’s house. She is a librarian and wrote a blog post about my grandfather and some clippings she found from my Grandmother’s brother Charlie’s wedding to Marnie back in the 1940’s.

I’ve emailed with her a few times and she is sending the clipping back to me so that I may forward it to my cousin "Little" Marnie, Big Marnie’s granddaughter. She lives in the Heights and I am touched that someone would think so highly of my Grandfather after only seeing his book collection and never actually knowing him. It really floored the family I think to hear my Papa read her blog post at the memorial.

Later that afternoon, we took his ashes out to the old Yellow Fever Cemetary in Brenham where my Grandmother and some family from the 1800’s are buried. (Side Note: We had some family from my Grandmother’s side move out to Brenham in the 1800’s. They all promptly contracted and died of Yellow Fever (good move!). Except one. She was sent back to W. Virginia and grew up to produce more family members that eventually produced my Grandmother. yay!)

We have buried him next to my Grandmother and will have a headstone out to replace the, um, stick very soon.

We left him with some Tabasco sauce in keeping with our having left my Grandmother with a bottle of her favorite beer, Red Seal Ale. (This ale is one of the brews from her brother Tom’s company, North Coast Brewing Co. Its good stuff.)

I did get some knitting done this week as well.

Check out the progress on the Hourglass.

What? You say the neckline looks a little different? Oh! You want a closeup??

Yep. Folks, I am home free now. I’ve done the turning row and just have to finish the facing and sew it down. I am so wearing this before the month is up!

I also started these on Thanksgiving day as we were driving to Brenham.

My feet approve of them so far.

(Yes, Mo, I’m magic looping two socks at the same time. I got over my incapability to comprehend the technique)

And because I’m feeling particularly Southern today, I shall leave you with this explanation of us Southern Folk.